Spring Lightning Photography

Severe weather season is upon us, which means I’ll be spending many an evening outside with my tripod pointed at the sky. Most of the time I don’t capture much, but it’s an excuse to stand outside and enjoy a nice Missouri thunderstorm.

Today was our first tornado watch of 2014 and after a line of storms passed through, the backside made for some beautiful views of the lightning filled clouds over a backdrop of a star filled sky. I might have got some better shots, however I happened to be reading bed time stories to my daughter as the view of the storm was peaking (which we watched out her bedroom window). The nice thing about photographing the back of the storm is that it’s rarely raining on me!

The reason some of the storm looks kind of blurry is not because the camera shook or was out of focus, but because of the speed of the storm. Any part of the cloud that was illuminated by a strike of lightning multiple times, shows up in slightly different positions in the photo.